1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for managing a cross-layer handover; and, more particularly, to a method for managing a cross-layer handover, which can optimize the handover performance of a mobile communication system by providing rapid and reliable handover decision, minimization of a data interruption time caused by a handover, a handover without a data loss, and a handover with minimized data retransmission and rearrangement by using a cross-layer scheme in the mobile communication system employing a hard handover.
Embodiments of the present invention take a 3G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) system as an example of a mobile communication system, and provide methods for supporting a rapid and lossless handover using a cross-layer mobility management scheme. It should be noted that the present invention is not limited to the above embodiments.
This work was supported by the IT R&D program for MIC/IITA [2005-S-404-22, “Research and development on 3G long-term evolution access system”]
2. Description of Related Art
3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardizes a 3G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) system as an intermediate system that evolves from the 3G mobile communication system to the 4 G communication system. The 3G LTE system requires an efficient mobility supporting scheme.
The 3GPP has proposed the standard specifications for the LTE system by the middle of 2007 and aims at commercializing the LET system between 2009 and 2010. ‘3GPP TSG RAN’ meetings are being conducted to define the standard specifications for the system. The protocol structure and the main functions of the system have been defined, but many parts have not yet been defined and are under discussion based on the 3G system technologies.
A cross-layer scheme is a protocol design scheme deviating from a standard layer based communication structure introduced for the performance enhancement in wireless network environments, which actively uses the connection between protocol layers.
The cross-layer scheme is being used for a variety of purposes such as communication performance optimization and power consumption reduction in wireless networks. However, the cross-layer scheme is not yet fully applied to handover schemes for mobile communication systems, particularly to handover schemes for the 3G and 3G LTE systems.